


where the wild things grow

by nickofhearts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Branding, Gen, Horizon Zero Dawn AU, Hunter!Ardyn, Hunter!Noctis, Wild Magics, Woad Markings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-12-04 07:56:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11550873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickofhearts/pseuds/nickofhearts
Summary: Noctis is a hunter, and an outcast. Vaguely inspired byHorizon Zero Dawn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamingcicadas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamingcicadas/gifts).



> I need to write moooore of this.

"Why don't the people in the villages like us?" Noctis remembers asking once.

"Because we're _outcasts,_ " Ardyn told him. He ruffled Noctis' hair, not unkindly, and added. "They'll attack you on sight, so be sure to stay _far_ from the villages at all time. _Understand,_ Noctis?"

"Yes, Ardyn." Noctis hesitantly held out his arms for a hug, and Ardyn must've been in a good mood, because he indulged him.

"I would be _most_ distraught if anything were to happen to you, Noctis."

"Yes, Ardyn," Noctis repeated dutifully, but he hugged Ardyn back just a little tighter, filled with warmth at the words.

-

Noctis talked to the animals instead, since _they_ didn't care that he was evidently an outcast. They weren't always the most scintillating of conversations, such as when the little fluffy bunnies chattered on about digging their burrows and preparing for young, but that made Noctis giggle too. He made sure to bring them extra carrots the next time he visited, for the little cotton tufts that could fit several into one of his palms to nibble on.

-

Hunting took skill, and endurance, and most of all _patience,_ knowing exactly when to strike. Noctis had been stalking the coeurl for almost a week, drinking sips of water and eating only the barest necessity of nuts and berries that he had in the pouch at his waist for this very purpose. This was a _test,_ and Noctis was only allowed to use the hunting knife he'd made himself from bones of previous hunts with Ardyn to take it down.

The coeurl hadn't spotted him, and Noctis was perfectly downwind so as not to alert it.

It'd just finished _its_ kill, no scraps left so it wasn't particularly wary of scavenging thieves, and it looked like it was getting ready for a nap, movements slow with sleepy satisfaction. Noctis crept closer carefully, moving deliberately so as not to rustle the grass under his feet. He waited until it was just about to leap up onto a branch for its nap, and he _struck,_ hurtling himself forward the last few feet and sinking his knife truly into its heart.

-

Noctis excitedly hurried back to camp, dodging the scavengers that nipped at his heels trying to steal bites of _his_ prize. He growled at them, the coeurl draped over his shoulders and soaking him with its blood, streaks of it on his face.

" _Well_ done, Noctis," Ardyn congratulated him on his return, and the rare praise from Ardyn was almost better than the moment of victory when Noctis had downed his prey.

Noctis watched carefully as Ardyn separated the flesh from the skin—something he usually left to Noctis, but he said this was _special,_ it was the first hunt Noctis had truly earned for himself. He was buzzing with elation as Ardyn handed him the heart, telling him to eat it raw and to _remember_ the coeurl, how Noctis had stalked its steps and become one with it, knowing the perfect moment when it wouldn't see him coming.

Noctis did, imagining himself as the sleek elegant creature, and then Ardyn draped just its skin over him this time, and Noctis was _one with that too._

He roared, prowling through the grasses on all fours, seeing and _smelling_ things that had never been apparent to him before. Noctis heard the movement before he saw it, and he _pounced,_ snatching a little field mouse in his mouth and crushing it between his jaws. The blood was rich and vibrant, tasting of _life,_ the little mousie' essence _his,_ now, and Noctis wanted _more._

-

A _hunter_ appeared in his vision, draped with the furs of various different species, marks of his success.

Noctis growled a challenge.

" _Noctis,_ " the hunter called, holding out his hands, but Noctis dashed through them easily, flicking his tail at the hunter's face.

He twisted around and howled _lightning,_ crackling on the air, but the hunter was quick, quicker even than _Noctis,_ who was as wind. He went down with the hunter on top of him, tearing at his _skin_ —

Noctis _screamed,_ yowling as he flailed his arms and legs, and then he remembered this was Ardyn, and _he_ wasn't a coeurl.

"I'm fine," he gasped out deep breaths, still tasting the blood in his mouth, the coeurl's senses and instincts slow to fade. "I'm me, Noctis."

Ardyn waited until _all_ the echoes of the coeurl passed from him before letting Noctis go.


	2. Chapter 2

Noctis remembered the night Ardyn had given him his first rune as clear is if it'd happened only days ago. The moon was bright and full in the sky, its light shining true upon him as Noctis knelt in the stone circle.

"Remain still," Ardyn had said, painting the lines slowly onto his face.

Noctis had, though he'd wanted to squirm. The paint was _cold,_ tickling against his skin. He'd breathed in and out, in and out, remembering Ardyn's lessons on meditation, clearing his mind and pushing everything else away.

He came back to himself to Ardyn murmuring words in an _old_ tongue, harsh gutteral sounds that made the hair on his arms stand up.

Noctis remained still and waiting, swallowing his urge to fidget.

Ardyn's voice which had started at a low murmur got louder and louder until it was all Noctis could hear, his skin humming with it, and then the marks Ardyn had painted _burned_ him, pain searing so deep that Noctis couldn't _breathe,_ but he kept still.

He kept still until Ardyn's voice stopped, and then there was only darkness.

-

Noctis woke up again by the side of the small pool in the old shrine, where Ardyn had mixed his paints before they'd begun the ritual.

"You did well," he told Noctis, and Noctis warmed to hear it.

He peeked into the pool where blue lines curved over his face in strange symbols, almost _glowing_ in the pale light, and gasped.

Ardyn traced the marks while Noctis watched. The skin was still tender, sore where Ardyn touched it, but Noctis didn't mind. "For protection," Ardyn murmured, of the rune that adorned his forehead. He moved to the ones curling over Noctis's cheeks—"for speed and agility, so you may outrun any you seek to hunt." His fingers dipped over Noctis's chin, to the twisting design that went over his collarbones.

"To bind us as one," Ardyn drew open his shirt, showing Noctis the same rune on his own skin. "So I may find you, always."

"Like a pack?" Noctis asked curiously, carefully touching the lines on Ardyn's collarbones.

" _Exactly_ like," Ardyn had told him with a smile.


	3. Chapter 3

"You control the _daemon,_ Noctis, do _not_ let the daemon control you," Ardyn had told him, again and again, but whenever Noctis draped the coeurl skin over his shoulders and slipped into its form, he just wanted to _hunt,_ to eat up all the little scurrying things that he knew were beneath himself— _he_ was the greatest predator in the wilds.

He called lightning with a snap of his tail, sizzling as it burned the very air.

He was faster than anything else that ran through the plains, faster than _wind._ He darted after a herd of fluffy yellow chocobos and took the fastest _strongest_ one down with a single snap of his powerful jaws.

The meat was tender, vibrant with health, and Noctis ate his fill.

He climbed up into a tall tree when he was done, tail hanging down from the branch as he slept off his satisfaction in the afternoon sun.

-

" _Noctis,_ " someone was calling him, and they didn't sound happy.

Noctis yawned, baring his sharp teeth, then settled back into his nap. It was too early to consider another hunt—he was full and satiated.

-

"Wake _up,_ Noctis," the voice was saying now; Noctis tried to bat them away, only to find himself danging in the air.

"Rrrrghhh?"

He kicked out his _legs,_ the completely wrong shape, turning his head as he tried to _bite._ His hands—not claws—flailed against a heavy coat, draped with the furs of its kills. A _hunter,_ and it'd caught Noctis while he'd been lazy in the aftermath of a kill. He growled, low and loud, promising appropriate retribution.

"Use your _words,_ Noctis, surely you remember?"

Noctis yelped as he was shaken, and he batted his hands harder at the hunter's false skin—where were his _claws?_

The hunter dropped him to the ground and Noctis scrambled up on all fours, snarling as he circled. He snapped his jaws at the tail of the hunter's coat, trying to drag him off balance. What he got was the hunter suddenly pinning him to the ground and getting _sat_ on, Noctis yowling out his displeasure as a palm was shoved in his face and he felt _magic_ in the air, resonating in his very bones, in the runes that marked his skin.

" _Ardyn?_ " he gasped, suddenly remembering.

"Quite so," Ardyn agreed, though he didn't get up.

"I think I'm okay now," Noctis mumbled, slightly embarrassed that he'd gotten so lost again. He could still taste the blood in his mouth, the coeurl's purring satisfaction under his skin—his _bare_ skin, since Ardyn had ripped his cloak off to reverse the transformation.

"Perhaps you should ruminate on where you went wrong _this_ time," Ardyn informed him.

Noctis squirmed; Ardyn was _heavy,_ it wasn't the most comfortable position to be doing deep thinking in, but it wasn't unwarranted. There'd been more than one instance when Noctis had slipped back into the coeurl's thinking as soon as Ardyn had backed off, and Noctis had forgotten his human self again. It was just—things were so much simpler as the coeurl, the world sharper and richer and _satisfying._

"Don't go into a transformation hungry?" he asked sheepishly.

Ardyn sighed, then flicked him on the nose, making Noctis mewl, his eyes zeroing in on Ardyn's fingers waving in his face. He'd bitten down on the gloved finger before he'd even thought about it, then spat it out at the disgusting taste. Ardyn had been collecting _herbs_ again.

"That's a start, I suppose." Ardyn finally got off him, holding out a hand to Noctis.

Noctis took it, though his senses were still the coeurl's, smelling and seeing the world in vibrant hues, but he knew not to dash after the little moving things that darted through the undergrowth, disturbing the blades of grass. Right now, he was human. Right _now,_ he had other priorities.


	4. Chapter 4

Noctis smeared the bright blue paint on himself, different to the runes Ardyn painted on him that couldn't be washed away or damaged by wounds— _they_ were attuned to his very soul.

The warpaint Noctis used now wasn't imbued by any magic ritual, merely an accent to the spells that were _already_ on his skin, their effectiveness breaking down by the second. That was fine, Noctis didn't need them to last forever; they were only an aid to his _own_ skills.

Noctis ran through the forest, skin bare of everything but the paint and his cloak, made up of all the daemons Noctis had hunted down and killed with his own two hands, close enough in heart that he could _become_ them, with a thought.

Ardyn had banned him from slipping any other forms until he had mastery of at least _one_ of them though, and he wasn't to practice unless Ardyn was near at hand to supervise.

Noctis sighed, scaling the nearest tree with an ease that was second nature by this point: he was lighter and nimbler, and Ardyn left the scouting to him most days. Noctis cast his eye around curiously, watching various groups of daemons meander their way about—nothing _too_ interesting, not even a higher daemon practice his skills on. How _dull_.

He _could_ wait until Ardyn got back to practice one of his new forms, or—he could test out the behemoth right now. There wasn't anyone for _miles_ , what could go wrong?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years later...

They'd been getting reports of inexplicable daemon sightings from hunters that'd trekked far from civilization, creatures of myth and fantasy never before seen. One swore up and down that he'd come across a black _phoenix,_ that it'd erupted into flames when shot with an arrow and then reappeared in a bonfire, born anew. There was the black coeurl, standing out amongst all the other coeurls, with eyes as blue as the clearest sapphires, and said not to only cast lightning, but spells of _every_ element.

 _Those_ rumours Nyx could put off to hunter superstition, began by one hunter who'd perhaps gotten too drunk at the fire one night and unwisely stumbled off into the woods to dream of fantastical daemon phoenixes or unnatural coeurls, the stories passing by word of mouth until they were more fiction than truth.

What _couldn't_ be brushed aside however, were the reports of a great black behemoth that had been said to have rampaged through several small countryside towns, leaving nothing in its wake but a wreck of material and human debris.

Nyx had been tasked specifically by the captain to seek out the creature—if it existed—or to bring back proof of the fallacy. Not _difficult,_ per se, but time consuming. Even on the fastest chocobo, going from town to town on the outskirts of civilization to inquire after rumours and ask if they knew of any neighboring villages getting hit by a behemoth attack was going to take some time.

"Annnnd that's why the captain gave _you_ this mission," Libertus had said with a smirk when Nyx complained.

"Eat your humble pie," Crowe added, completely unsympathetically.

Nyx had flipped them both off before riding off into the sunset—or rather, to the nearest outpost to get directions—on his chocobo.

-

Nyx ached _all_ over. He'd never spent so long on a chocobo in a single day, and he felt it in every single muscle, screaming at him for rest and possibly never to get on a chocobo again. He checked his map. The nearest town was…another day's ride away.

" _Augh!_ " Nyx shouted, kicking at a helpless rock that went flying a less than satisfactory distance.

Still grumbling to himself, Nyx reluctantly set up camp, assembling a makeshift shelter and heating a bowl of cup noodles for dinner. When that was done, he curled up against his chocobo for sleep, which came more quickly than he'd expected…

-

Nyx snapped awake with a start, kukuris flashing immediately into his hands. It seemed his camp had been surrounded by a group of voretooths in the middle of the night, their eyes glowing at him in the darkness. _They_ appeared to have their own problems however, as a black blur faster than Nyx could follow _tore_ its way through the group of them, each daemon going down with a whimper before it even had a chance to snap its teeth at their attacker.

 _What the hell,_ Nyx thought to himself when his would-be murderers were all taken care of and the blur resolved itself into a young man that appeared to be barely out of his teens.

"You picked a bad place to sleep," the kid said, his words curling with a strange accent Nyx couldn't place, though the Kingsglaive was full of refugees from every corner of Eos. His face was even _stranger,_ marked by blue ink in whorls and dashes that seemed a living thing on his skin, shifting with his movements. Putting all that aside, there was something about him that was vaguely _familiar,_ though Nyx couldn't quite figure it out.

"Thanks for the assist," Nyx told him, holding out a hand. "Nyx Ulric, Kingsglaive-in-training."

The kid stared at his hand like he didn't know what to do with it, and Nyx quickly pulled it back, feeling awkward.

"Noctis," he answered after a moment, then—"What's a Kingsglaive?"

" _Noctis Lucis Caelum?!?_ " Nyx almost yelled in startlement. Now that he was looking, he could see it. The kid had the black hair and blue eyes of his father, _the king,_ and he must've been using magic earlier in the fight with the daemons—how else could he have been moving so fast?

The kid tilted his head at Nyx quizzically, no recognition of the full name on his face. "No, just Noctis."

"Are you out here alone?" Nyx wondered suddenly. The prince was supposed to be _dead,_ perished in a daemon attack when he was just a child. But no one outside the royal line could use _magic,_ and no one would have named their kid Noctis out of deference for the king's tragic loss.

Noctis just rolled his eyes at him. He put two fingers to his lips and whistled, loud and clear.

Nyx looked in the direction of a sudden rustle in the undergrowth, and his chocobo came running back from wherever she'd fled to when he'd been surrounded by voretooths, the _coward._

"We follow the old ways," Noctis told him when Nyx threw him a questioning look.

"We?"

"Me and Ardyn."

"Ardyn—"

Noctis didn't even dignify that with a response.

"Right," Nyx answered himself. "Just Ardyn."

"What are you doing out here anyways?" Noctis asked him, gaze suddenly turned suspicious as he watched Nyx pat down his chocobo, checking her for injuries. "No one comes out here except for outcasts and—" he shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

"Outcasts?" it was Nyx's turn to ask.

"You know," Noctis said. "People the tribes won't accept. You're not from around here, are you?"

"No, I'm from Galahd, or I guess more recently from the Crown City—"

"The Crown City?" Noctis asked, then his eyes widened. "Where the _Crystal_ is?" He suddenly moved back a few steps, and Nyx was now _sure_ this was in fact, Noctis Lucis Caelum, the supposedly late prince, when a bow appeared in his hands with a shimmer of magic, notched with an arrow that was aimed exactly between Nyx's eyes.

Nyx froze stock still. "Whoa, hey, I don't know what you have against the Crystal, but—"

"The Crystal is the source of all _corruption_ in the world," Noctis answered with a hiss. He drew the string back—

Nyx dodged, warping quickly out of the way of _more_ arrows that followed his path unerringly. He had to knock a few out of the air with his kukuris before they buried themselves in less than ideal places; the kid was an ace shot, _that_ was for sure.

Nyx rolled and warped quickly in succession, trying to get around him, but it was as if Noctis knew where he would _be._

 _Fuck this,_ Nyx thought and charged directly _at_ him instead, knocking any arrows to the ground.

He warped the last few feet and slammed directly into Noctis, sending them both sprawling. "Can we _talk,_ " Nyx shouted, dodging to the side when Noctis' response was to try and headbutt him in the face.

Instead of an answer, Nyx got suddenly _fur_ beneath his hands and the low rumbling growl of a fucking _behemoth_ that rose from the ground, tossing its head and sending Nyx flying. Its eyes were the same blue that Noctis' had been, its body the same black as his hair.

"Oh, _shit,_ " Nyx swore.


End file.
